My review of The Forsyte Saga, by John Galsworthy

The Forsyte Saga

by John Galsworthy

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

This is for me the definitive period saga, by Nobel Prize-winning John Galsworthy. The reader follows the intertwined characters' lives for many years and several generations, with the collection comprising three hefty novels breaking down into five volumes:

The Man of Property (1906)

Indian Summer of a Forsyte (1918)

In Chancery (1920)

Awakening (1920)

To Let (1921)

Almost everyone I've known had seen this before reading it, including my great-grandparents. Two silent film adaptations, 1921 and 1922, captivated some Galsworthy devotees but attracted erstwhile print-shy masses who became converts, running out in droves to buy the cumbersome books. 

Similarly, a high calibre 2002-3 miniseries starring Gina McKee and Damian Lewis, with an endearingly wrinkly Wendy Craig, proved a satisfying recreation for some author fans but a watchable inspiration for the new millennium's page-reluctant youth, hoards becoming seduced into reading it, fuelling a modern-day sales resurgence.

My own adolescent introduction to this extensive fictional family was via the classic 1967 TV adaptation with a cherubic young Michael York, the then stellar Nyree Dawn Porter, pretty ingénue Susan Hampshire and the all-accomplishing Margaret Tyzack (featuring, as Smither, the wondrous late Maggie Jones who would later win British hearts as Coronation Street's acerbic-tongued, gallows-humoresque Blanche Hunt).

The saga concerns the trials and tribulations of a twin-pronged nouveau riche British family, whose not so distant forbears were farmers. The author's own 'new money' upper-class family was not unlike this fictional one he so meticulously chronicles. The materially acquisitive protagonist, solicitor Soames Forsyte, is incurably unfulfilled despite his ever-expanding assets and status, his heart remaining shattered over first wife Irene.

Soames' rival cousin, painter Young Jolyon, who is actually older than Soames, was originally the family's favourite until deserting his wife for their daughter's governess, forever since thumbing his nose at society. The latter, however, subsequently remarries Soames' ex-wife, Irene, concreting their cousinly enmity.

Themes threading these volumes together include those common to the historic family saga genre: blood feuding, changing generations, mortality, ambition and duty versus desire.

There was something about the older Forsytes I found more endearing, their often-comical arch snobbery, their handwringing at not having quite yet reached that 'old money' mark, their whacky foibles, quirky prejudices and neurotic manifestations of status anxiety. 

The younger generations, as the saga progresses, have less edge, having mostly seen the errors of their forebears' ways and adapted for the 'better' (making them blander all round). They also represent the later period, as we compare them to their elders and their new epoch to times past. This characteristic is necessitated by the very concept of family saga. It demonstrates the loosening of restraint, the attitudinal progress time brings.

That necessity of genre notwithstanding, it is the very eccentricities, queerness and glaring shortcomings of the older, earlier Forsytes that makes them such colourful reading subjects (as was the case with those earlier penned, unforgettable characters of Dickens and other great nineteenth century masters from which Galswworthy's style seemingly draws considerable inspiration). 

Unlike some great sagas, this one never departs from English society's upper strata to glimpse the characters' lower-class counterparts, reminding us, perhaps, of the author's somewhat stifled cloistered upbringing. As if offsetting that limitation, there is sufficient of the 'downstairs' (the timeless, classless, primal) in some of these multidimensional, magnificently drawn 'upstairs' characters, whose humaneness at times transcends the abstract of class. Though they are all, superficially, defined by their staunch social status, we are frequently reminded of that humble, if ambitious, farmers' blood still coursing through their not yet fully gentrified veins. This paradoxical edge to the Forsytes is charming, sometimes laughable, sometimes sad but makes them always accessible to us, the reader.

It took me many months, with breaks between volumes but, having selected it as midwinter bedtime reading, I remained blissfully unhurried about the mammoth task. Was often unable to put it down and switch off the bedside lamp, getting in 'just another quick chapter before I nod off' then noticing the dawn glimmering in through the blinds. I was left feeling nauseatingly smug as I closed the final page of the final book.

By no means a quick, easy or lazy read, this detailed body of work demands intense focus or continuity evaporates. The mental investment, however, is worth the rewards, as we end up on intimate terms with a remarkable family. If you love historical sagas, The Forsyte Saga is considered by aficionados to be the original, the ultimate one of its kind. This is something you will have seriously missed out on if the effort is not made. A magnificent work from a master storyteller.